


the sound of my heart

by jayflyaway (orphan_account)



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Inspired by Music, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-14
Updated: 2016-05-14
Packaged: 2018-06-03 14:32:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6614344
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/jayflyaway
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Nursey, no!" Bitty yells, but it's too late.<br/>Nursey's pressed the button on the screen, and they hear nothing for a long moment before sound suddenly swells out of the speakers, classical that Jack is way too familiar with. He stares at Bitty, eyes wide, as the music continues playing.<br/>"Nursey, shut it off," Bitty says, his voice strained. "Please."</p>
            </blockquote>





	the sound of my heart

**Author's Note:**

> You guessed it: my first work for this fandom is a soulmate au, where there's constantly music playing in the back of your head--generally whatever song is most important to your soulmate. It gets louder/more noticeable when something important is changing in your relationship.

The first song that Jack remembers is from when he was eight years old. It stays the familiar love song about a song for about four years, and then it switches abruptly and keeps changing, songs that Jack can't recognise and can't name, instrumental melodies. They're faint and he has to struggle to hear them, but he thinks that's just because he hasn't met his soulmate yet. He thinks that his soulmate is probably a musician, someone in orchestra or someone who plays piano, because it's always classical music that he's hearing. His parents ask him what he hears, sometimes, and he shrugs and says he doesn't know. He'll meet his soulmate eventually, and that's enough for him, because he just wants to focus on hockey. He doesn't tell his parents that, but he knows that they look concerned sometimes, by how casual he seems to be about his soulmate. After another couple years, he stops paying attention to the music completely, except for absentmindedly noting that sometimes it's pop music that he hears, instead of strings and piano.

After the overdose, he does nothing but listen to the music for a long while. It switches frequently, between classical music and what he assumes are pop hits, and he wonders how his soulmate is doing. He hopes that their music brings them more joy than hockey did him, and wonders what music his soulmate is getting from him. It can't be anything cheerful and he feels bad for whoever it is that's going to be stuck with him. He's ruined everything, and he's almost certain that his soulmate will deserve better than what they'll get. Even his parents are struggling now, trying to figure out how to reach out to their son, but that's all his fault. He's turned their world on its axis, and won't talk to them about it, and he doesn't blame them for struggling with him. They ask him what they can do, how they can help, over and over and over again, and it makes everything worse, rather than better. They can't do anything to help him when he's the one who dragged himself into this mess.

And then the music changes and stays, and it's still faint. He gets used to hearing the strings in the quiet when he's trying to sleep, but he still doesn't know what it is that he's hearing. At Samwell his freshman year, he pays attention to every musician he meets, but there's too many of them, and none of them make the music in his head louder. He puts it to the back of his mind, and loses time for it, in between studying and playing hockey and being dragged places by Shitty. He watches people around him matching up to their soulmates over time and wonders when he'll find his own. He's older than his soulmate, he knows, and older than most of the students here, mostly because this wasn't his original plan.

The music swells a little his junior year, and he thinks it's possible that he's met his soulmate. He still doesn't know who it is, but he's made his peace with it. Instead, he focuses on hockey, and hopes his soulmate will be okay with who he is. He spends time trying to cure one of the frogs of his fear of checks. 

As he gets to know Bitty more in his senior year, Jack wishes that the music in his head isn't heavy strings and piano, is something upbeat and pop. There's something about Bitty that he finds attractive, but Bitty's soulmate has one of those Beyonce songs in the back of his head, not the classical melody in Jack's. Jack refuses to consider that it could be anything else, because Bitty is upbeat and happy, and as much as Jack feels something, Jack also knows that he doesn't deserve him. Bitty is not perfect, of course he isn't, but he is  _good,_ and with him, it's an unshakable uncertainty. Bitty doesn't push, and Jack still remembers the horrible flare of guilt when Bitty's helmet flew off and the realisation that he cared. So he'll wait for his soulmate and the melody in the back of his head, which gets slightly louder still sometime late in first semester.

* * *

 

They're preparing for what's likely the seniors' last kegster when things come to a head. Nursey is scrolling through Bitty's playlists, while Jack watches over his shoulder, bemused by the sheer number of them, when he stops, his finger hovering over a playlist that is simply titled 'the rink.'

"Bitty?" Nursey calls, to the other side of the room, where Bitty is in conversation with Ransom and Holster about something that involves lots of wild hand gestures.

Bitty looks up at him expectantly, and Nursey doesn't say anything for a long moment, his brow furrowed.

"Why do you have a playlist called 'the rink?'" Nursey asks, finally. It's a fair question. They can't use personal music players during practice, and they don't usually blare music over the speakers. There's no real reason for Bitty to have a playlist for the rink.

Even from across the room, they can see the way his brown eyes widen alarmingly. "Nursey, no!" Bitty yells, but it's too late.

Nursey's pressed the button on the screen, and they hear nothing for a long moment before sound suddenly swells out of the speakers, classical that Jack is way too familiar with. He stares at Bitty, eyes wide, as the music continues playing.

"Nursey, shut it off," Bitty says, his voice strained. "Please."

Nursey seems stupefied, staring at the phone and the music bursting out from the speakers. Lardo seems to materialise out of nowhere, grabbing the phone and abruptly disconnecting it from the speakers. The resulting silence is deafening as everyone watches Bitty, who looks small and terrified, his eyes blown wide, his hands shaking. This is the most unsettled they've ever seen him, and they've seen him in a lot of states. His normally expressive face is frozen, staring at the phone in Lardo's hand as if music is still playing. No one knows what is happening, except that Bitty looks to be on the verge of a breakdown.

Lardo's face softens as she breaks the silence, crossing to the other side of the room to hand him his phone. "I'm sorry, Bitty."

Bitty shakes his head and retreats to the kitchen, and Jack continues to stare at the spot where he had been standing, because he knows those strings and that piano, and he could have called a million things, but never, not in a million years, would he have thought that Bitty would actually end up being his soulmate, that the gentle, swelling music would belong to him. Of course, it's possible that it's only a coincidence, but Jack doesn't think the universe is that cruel. He exhales shakily and goes back to moving boxes of alcohol. He doesn't want to think about what just happened. 

* * *

 They don't talk about it that night, but the next day, Jack offers to get Bitty a coffee, and Bitty, surprisingly, agrees.

"I don't want to talk about yesterday," Bitty says, after they get their drinks and sit at a table. His voice is small and he won't look Jack in the eyes, shrouded in quiet misery.

Jack shrugs, but he's burning with curiosity. "One question that you shouldn't feel obligated to answer."

"If I don't have to answer it..." Bitty trails off, biting his lip. Jack thinks to himself that he's never seen Bitty look this anxious, not even during checking practices.

"The song, what was it?" Jack asks, slowly, carefully, no inflection in his voice whatsoever.

There's a beat, a pause, and Jack's almost positive that Bitty is not going to answer, but Bittle surprises him and does. "Holst's Jupiter. It's a cut."

They settle into another long pause, but this one is more charged. It's almost like Bitty is going to say something, but needs to work up the courage to do it. Bitty's hands twist around each other, fluttering like birds. After a few long, long moments, during which his eyes skitter around, focusing on everything but Jack, he adds on to his answer, quietly, something that Jack almost doesn't hear. 

"It's the last song I ever skated to."

Suddenly, Jack understands, and his face floods with compassion. The expression on Bitty's face yesterday makes sense, and so does the expression on his face when he'd started talking. He's wondered, often, why Bitty quit figure skating. Bitty never says anything, but he always speaks about it in a wistful tone. It's obviously something he misses, and something he hasn't quit voluntarily. "I'll make sure no one bothers you about it."

"I don't think you'll be able to stop them, Jack," Bitty says, looking small and sad. 

Jack shrugs. "I can try. As long as they don't know that it's the song your soulmate hears, I'm sure they'll drop it."

Bitty's jitters increase. "Why do you say that?"

Jack winces to himself. He couldn't possibly be more obvious, could he? "I, uh, just thought it would be true. I mean, it's still on your phone, and you haven't skated in years, so I thought it would be your most important song."

Bitty's gaze gets reflective, as he wraps his hands around his overly sugary drink. "You're probably right, Mr. Zimmermann. What about your soulmate?"

"What about them?" Jack asks, his hands beginning to tremble under the table.

The answering grin he gets is a little too bright, but he thinks Bitty will be okay now. "What do you hear?"

Jack doesn't want to lie, but he also doesn't want to tell the truth, not now, not when it's been forced out of the boy in front of him, so he settles on a white lie. "I don't know what it is. It's instrumental."

"And you're terribly behind on pop culture," Bitty says, shaking his head mournfully. "You wouldn't be able to recognise it either way."

Jack knows he's prying and asks anyway. "What do you hear? I guess you recognise it, if you're trying to chirp me about my music taste."

Bitty nods, a wry grin on his face. "It changed a lot, but it settled and stayed on Halo a few months after I got here."

 "The song you're always singing?" Jack asks, even though he knows full well that it is the song that Bitty's always singing. Jack thinks he might be a bit of a glutton of punishment. 

Bitty's smile blooms into something beautiful and warm, and Jack thinks to himself that he is smitten. "We'll make a pop culture savant out of you yet."

Jack just lets his shoulders lift slightly before dropping. Bitty laughs and Jack looks at the sunlight reflecting off of his golden hair and  _wants._

* * *

 Then it's graduation, and he can see that Bitty wants to say something and isn't, and he's too much of a coward to say anything, and the music in his head is swelling, and when his father asks him what's wrong, the truth bursts out of his mouth. At first his father misunderstands, but then he smiles at Jack and tells him to go, so he does. He races across campus in his dress shoes, the music getting louder and louder and louder still. He bursts into the house, huffing in the doorway of Bitty's room, but he's not there, and his heart dives into his stomach as he wonders if he's too late, but then he hears a sniffle, and he's not too late. Thank god, he's just in time. 

His steps quicken as he heads towards his soulmate, and in that moment, he doesn't care about how hard his life will be. His future is going to hold too many secrets, and too much media scrutiny, but it'll be worth it.

* * *

 Eric Bittle sits in a chair. His phone buzzes, and as he reads the message on his screen, he raises a hand to cover the broad grin spreading across his face.

_Holst's Jupiter. I've been hearing it for almost five years now._

**Author's Note:**

> Did anyone figure out what the first song Jack heard was? (Hint: it's from the 70s and super overdone)  
> Um, I have nothing to say about this, but if you want, you can find me on tumblr at jay-fly-away.tumblr.com :)


End file.
